Pawns, Victims, or Heroes: The Negotiation of Stigma and the Plight of Oregon's Loggers

This paper compares environmentalists' characterizations of timber workers with timber workers' portraits of themselves. A discursive analysis of invocations of stigma and victimization reveals two grassroots groups' battle for political standing. Timber workers summoned their experiences of stigmatization to create politically effective group alliances and to promote a logging culture worthy of protection. Environmentalists counteracted constructions of loggers as culturally unique by referring to timber workers as pawns of the industry and by referring to timber communities as pathological. A dynamic tension is produced in which stigma must be negotiated and/or claimed by each group because both groups need to achieve political power and yet maintain their respective images as grassroots underdogs.